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"Deer" playwright Aaron Mark about the origin of the show

Aaron Mark:

Back in 2012, a friend of mine had just returned to New York from a weekend away at her house in the Poconos, on the drive to which she’d hit a deer. Or rather, a deer hit her car - I remember her insisting the deer darted out in front of the car out of nowhere, so it was the deer’s fault, obviously - Regardless, the animal was critically injured, groaning helplessly on the road in front of her blood-spattered bumper, and what followed, she said, was a moment of truth for her and the friend who’d been in the car with her. The deer wasn’t going to survive, so shouldn’t one of them put it out of its misery? Isn’t that the humane thing to do? The obligation, even? But which one of them would do it? And how? And what’s revealed about someone who doesn’t mind getting their hands dirty? And about someone who’d rather let it linger in agony? I was obsessed by the idea of this moment, and by the circumstances under which facing such a moment might push someone over the edge. How do we know when and how to put something we’re afraid to lose out of its misery? I don’t have an answer to this question, and that’s why I wrote the play